By MICHAEL SLOVANOS
THE Australian, a newspaper read by relatively few Australians, is Rupert Murdoch’s personal press corps of mostly contracted journalists who lean towards the Liberal Party or act as enforcers of mainstream political orthodoxy.
The same goes for Nine Media, owners of 9News the Sydney Morning Herald and Age newspapers, who lean Labor’s way but will tolerate a “respectable centrist” Coalition government or two.
This means cheering on the Uniparty game of alternating “turns” between Labor and the Coalition – an arrangement also favoured by the big corporates who employ lobbyists and buy favours from both sides but haven’t got time for “the others”.
The result of this orthodoxy is parties finding “clean” cardboard cut-out candidates, who simply occupy a seat in Parliament and say “yes” or “no” when they’re told to by the party heavyweights. One Nation’s Warren Pickering is not one of them.
When One Nation suddenly started overtaking the Liberal-National Coalition in opinion polls and then drawing ahead of Labor, the enforcers of Australian political orthodoxy had a problem – a bunch of crass political outsiders were threatening to upset the apple cart.
And in Victoria a Resolve Political Monitor poll, commissioned by The Age, and published in July, showed “the state of play remains difficult for Labor and the Coalition, with both parties recording a subdued primary vote of 27 per cent”.
What was also noted by the Nine News papers was One Nation polling a primary vote of 22 per cent, that, if repeated on election day, would likely result in the election of all One Nation’s seven Legislative Council candidates.
This is unthinkable in the minds of the Australian political class, as represented by the Liberal-Labor party hacks and the mainstream media, so something had to be done to throw cold water on these outsiders.
The Australian jumped in with a two-part hit piece against against Pickering, One Nation’s lead candidate for Victoria. The hit piece which reeks of desperation to defend the embattled Victorian Liberals, who have come out attacking the very party that may well hold the balance of power in the next Victorian Parliament.
The first hit piece against Pickering featured a bunch of allegations made by his former partner, Joanna Scott, who has been described as an extremely troubled woman with a history of hospitalisation for drug use, suicide attempts and prison time.
The Family Court, which usually rules against fathers in custody cases, dismissed the wild allegations made by Ms Scott, and Pickering was given sole custody of his daughter from 2010 and went on to maintain an Australian Government security clearance to serve with the Army operationally in eight countries.
According to associates, Pickering is still involved in the lives of his four adult kids and has a healthy relationship with them. In contrast, his ex “struggles to maintain a meaningful relationship with them”, but has told media she’s willing to provide evidence of Pickering’s drug use some 20 years ago.
Well big deal. Even if Pickering used marijuana and ice 20 years ago, he doesn’t now and he’s in politics to bring change to a nation that is sick and tired of the standard political charades played by media, those cardboard cut-out politicans and their big business bankrollers.
The Australian’s second hit on Pickering was that he had to pay back a first homeowner’s grant of $13,500. Again, big deal. The application for the grant apparently failed to mention that Ms Scott had failed to declare a previous interest in a home she held before July 1, 2000. We don’t know whose fault that was.
The State Revenue Office (SRO) subsequently issued a final notice to pay on January 2010, and according to The Australian, Ms Scott’s claim that Mr Pickering did not intend to repay the money still had not done so “has not been independently established, and the SRO has not publicly disclosed what occurred after its 2010 demand”.
If Mr Pickering had not paid, the matter would have gone to court by now, which would be public information. It sounds like Ms Scott is just dredging up bad-sounding allegations as part of some sort of personal vendetta against her ex and The Australian should know better than to give credence to a vindictive ex who lost custody of her children.
If anything, it’s another sad story of relationship breakdown, which many Australians go through.
One Nation knew about the separation and drug use allegations before selecting Mr Pickering as lead candidate but they chose him anyway because he had the strength of character to turn his life around.
As we stated before, there have been very much more serious allegations made against Australian politicians, such as in the police document held by former Liberal senator Bill Heffernan, that claimed to contain a list of 28 prominent individuals, including a former prime minister, accused of pedophilia.
The Australian and other Australian media, apparently found the document “too hot to handle” because of defamation concerns.
